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Let Poor Benefit From Urban Change

Updated March 16, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

Julia Vitullo-Martin's "The 'Authentic' City Wrecking Ball" (Taste, March 4) misrepresents my book "Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places." I do not want Harlem to return to the years of racial segregation and social disadvantage when it was, in the words of the psychologist Kenneth Clark, a "dark ghetto." I believe that Harlem residents should be well served by a variety of stores and restaurants from Settepani to Starbucks, H&M and Harlem Vintage. But my book calls attention to the displacement of longtime store owners by recent upscale redevelopment that has brought...